Graphics sound like they tear, have lots of draw-in, etc. The out of car gameplay is broken, etc.

It's really sad to see a game like this possibly turn out so bad. I have no clue if we'll be getting a copy to review or not. I was thinking about renting this, but that may be a waste of money itself.

After reading the Gamespot and IGN reviews, my interest in this game went from 0 to negative 10. Just confirmed what I was thinking, it didn't look like anything special and it seems like a waste of what was a fairly good game in driver 2.

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"I hate cynicism -- it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind amazing things will happen." - Conan O'Brien

It is too bad, as this game has had a lot of hype and A TON of money poured into the production. I was looking forward to it, just because it sounded like it could be a solid/very good title. I scratch my head when I read all the previews of this game, see the amount of money behind it, and then hear how horribly flawed it turned out.

The sad thing is, if they fixed the gameplay, it would sell a ton of copies and possibly become what it not-so-secretly wanted to be: mentioned in the same breath as GTA.

What went wrong here? The stars seemed perfectly aligned for this title to rock, but...

Well, my first smell of Driv3r possibly being a bad game was last month's EGM cover story where they previewed Driv3r. They subtly said that things were broken in the game that they hoped would be fixed by the time the game came out, although he wasn't too high on that happening.

As for EGMs reviews...the two that gave it the higher scores really focused in on the driving aspect of the game as well as the meticulous graphics of the cities. The last one (the 6.5) railed against the other two reviewers for thinking the game was frustration-free. They may have been kind to it, but EGM has been kind to other games as well. I personally still like the magazine though.

I was a bit shocked to see the scores in EGM (which I got today) and then read the scores tonight. This game was not as highly hyped as that little game Atari came out with last May called Enter the Matrix. Nevermind that I wasn't reading much in the way of dissention on that game until the reviews came out. With Driv3r previews, if you read between the lines you could see the disappointment.

Any interest in the title I had vanished as soon as I read the 'l33t' title of the game. That right there told me that there was things wrong with the game.

That, and quotes like this from Gamespot:

Quote

A big part of what makes Driver 3 so mediocre is a series of technical, graphical glitches that make the game look like an absolute mess. For starters, the game is very, very aliased for an Xbox game. Everything from Tanner's legs to the sides of car models are incredibly jaggy. Playing in the game's 480p video mode just makes this problem stick out even more. Also, the game has a great deal of nasty pop-up. What makes it so much nastier than your average pop-up or draw-in is that the distance at which items appear seems to vary at random. On average, cars tend to appear when they're around the equivalent of 80 feet from your position, which when you're cruising along at full speed, is just enough time to react. Unfortunately, sometimes cars won't show up until they're even closer. This can be catastrophically frustrating, as one crash can often be the difference between completing a mission and having to replay it. The problem isn't limited to cars, either. Ramps also decide to appear with the same randomness. For example, if you need to get up onto a rooftop to complete an objective, you won't be able to see the ramp you need to jump from until you're almost on top of it, which is something that goes beyond the realm of a mere graphics problem and begins to seriously impact the gameplay as well.

And this was from the Xbox version. So, was this title a simple port from the PS2 version, or was this game simply doomed from the start? Or was this yet another game rushed out the door thanks to Atari?

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

I don't think it was rushed out because it originally was coming earlier this year. This is just conjecture, but I'm willing to bet Atari played the game before it was about to go gold earlier this year and saw utter crap. They then told Reflections they had X months to fix it. Within that X months they didn't totally fix it and Atari probably decided, "we said it would be out on such and such date, might as well get the suckers who liked Driver 1 and 2 to buy it."

It really is sad because this would be the second straight year Atari has a hugely hyped game that turns out to be crap. Meanwhile, they released things like Unreal Tournament 2004 (pretty unanimously fantastic) and Transformers (which got generally good reviews) and they still have Sid Meier and his brain helping them.

The 1Up guy (OPM, EGM and 1Up are all part of the same publishing company) gave it an 8.5 because Driv3r finally created what they wanted in Driver 1 and 2...that being a movie-like game. The OPM guy said the 80% driving is fantastic, but the 20% walking totally destroys the game.

Could this also go in the Are Game Reviews Bought? thread as well? You decide.

I don't think it really applies here. That Inquirer story seemed to indicate that Atari was offering free copies of the game in exchange for a rating of 9 or higher. This would really only be appealing to amateur fan sites. Major sites and mags like EGM, Gamespot, OPM, etc already get free advance copies of the game.

It was more a broad question to get discussion going...heh. We have two more reviews in Today's wrap up on the main page, but I wanted to point out Gamespy's Review (2 out of 5 stars) because it is just hilarious to read.

Reflections is quite happy to tell everyone it was first to implement a GTA-style romp in a 3D space. We're just as happy to tell Reflections that it'll be the last developer to replicate actual innovative GTA gameplay to any of its own titles.

Wow, this title is getting hammered. I am going to be curious to see how it sells. Sure, there are going to be a lot of people that saw the exciting ads and picked it up in the first week, but how long will it live on the charts?

I expect it to be much like Enter the Matrix, although probably not sell as many copies. I expect it to top the rental and sales charts for this week. Then Spider-Man 2 comes and will dethrone it on both charts next week, but Driv3r will still be up there in sales and rentals probably.

Just to make you guys excited, my review on this game will be posted this afternoon. I rented it just to see how bad/good it was. Just to give you guys an inkling, the final score is higher than Gamespot/IGN/Gamespy, but lower than 1Up. Have fun guessing and I'll start a new thread up for Review discussion, would you guys want to continue the discussions there and lock this or keep this open?